It’s hard to believe Google Drive’s just now getting copy / paste shortcuts

Google has announced that it’s adding the ability to use keyboard shortcuts to cut, copy, and paste files in Drive, as long as you’re using Chrome. The feature will use th— okay, hold on just a minute here. Are you really trying to tell me that we couldn’t already do this?

Sure enough, when I went to Google Drive on the web and pressed Command + C on a file, then went into a folder and pressed Command + V, nothing happened. And this December 2021 archive of Drive’s list of keyboard shortcuts doesn’t say anything about the functions. Which is fine, really — it’s not like keyboard shortcuts for copy, cut, and paste have been around since the functions’ invention in the 1970s.

The feature’s rolling out now, though, and Google’s post says that you’ll be able to use the standard Control / Command + C, X, and V to copy and move files around like you would in pretty much any other file manager. The company says the feature should be available to everyone by June 4th.

While Google’s very late to the party on this one, at least its implementation isn’t half-assed. Yes, it’s adding the basic shortcuts, but the feature will also work across different tabs (Google’s also added a keyboard shortcut for opening a folder as a new tab: Ctrl / Cmd + Enter). And, if you copy a file and then try to paste it into, say, a Google Doc or email, it’ll insert the file’s title and a link to it.

You’ll also be able to paste shortcuts to files if you don’t want duplicate versions all over your cloud storage system. The command for that will be Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + V.

Google’s been on a roll recently with adding better late than never features — on Wednesday, it announced that the ability to select multiple blocks of text is coming to Google Docs.